AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
Ayound the Garden 
A MONTHLY KALENDAR OF TIMELY GARDEN OPERA- 
TIONS AND USEFUL HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS 
ABOUT THE HOME GARDEN AND 
GROUNDS 
NOVEMBER GARDEN NOTES 
A] HE gardener’s kalendar varies little, year 
after year, from the re-current tasks and 
occupations that present themselves to the 
garden-maker with the return of the month. 
Now and then someone discovers something 
to add to the list of things to be done, or 
subtracts something from the sum of one’s gardening opera- 
tions as a thing to be postponed or placed ahead, as new 
experience leads the consensus of modern authorities to 
approve. 
F course November is the general garden house-clean- 
ing month, the time for raking-up leaves, for bonfires 
and for getting together the last contributions to the 
compost heap, which will be useful in the Spring, for strew- 
ing over the garden before the soil is worked up. 
OFTEN think we take too little interest in the study of the 
plants in our gardens, simply regarding our beds of beauti- 
All queries will gladly be answered by the Editor. If a personal 
reply is desired by subscribers stamps should be enclosed therewith. 
November, 1912 
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ful blossoming plants as areas of lovely color, delightful 
fragrance, the flowers themselves with transient sentiment. 
It seems to me that in the long Winter evening before us, 
the true garden lover will wish to learn something more 
intimate than the mere names of the flowers he selects from 
the nurserymen’s catalogues as units of his garden-to-be. 
He should take heed of the pleasant recreation which 
botany will afford him, and will find that a little subject of 
the study now will bring an added pleasure to his interest 
in plants in all seasons to come. And then there is much 
that is entertaining, and well worth while in a study of plant- 
love in its literary aspects. Read your Shakespeare care- 
fully, or your Chaucer, or old Omar Khayyam with an eye 
to the discovery of the flowers these old authors mentioned 
in their immortal writings. What could be more delectable 
than a little garden of the flowers Shakespeare mentions, or 
Chaucer, or a garden of the fragrant blossoms we have bor- 
rowed from the Orient of which “The Rubaiyat” makes 
mention? Again, when we have begun our selections for 
early ordering, why should we not take a little time to con- 
sider the legends of the plants of which we are fond? Surely 
it is worth while digging them out of the old-time garden 
brooks, translations from the classics, encyclopedias, his- 
tories and other books. How much it adds to our interest 
in a flower, to know more than that it is merely 
Heliotrope—purple—fragrant—delicate. Is it not a true 
satisfaction to know that this sweet plant first came from 
Peru, that it was brought into France, that the sentimental 
garden-folk there called it, the herb of love, and Ovid’s 
story of Apollo and Clytia which we have attached to it? 
Surely it is worth all the trouble to which one puts himself 
in delving into the legendary love of the realm of the god- 
dess Flora for stories of the flowers and plants that find a 
place in one’s heart and gardens. 
AN ARBOR SEAT 
By Zulma DeL. Steele 
aN the small suburban, or back yard garden, 
of the ordinary city lot, where there are no 
trees or large shrubs to furnish shade and 
where, very often, the sun beats down piti- 
lessly, or is reflected from the walls of ad- 
joining buildings, it is a problem how to con- 
trive a shady nook or corner where one can read, write, sew, 
or sit down to sort out seeds or arrange flowers, and one 
may well consider the subject now and plan in November the 
building of an arbor seat for next Spring’s planting to bring 
to completion with the return of another Summer. 
UR garden was a parallelogram bounded on two sides 
by picket fences, and separated from our neighbor in the 
rear by a high, close, board fence. Against this fence in 
the center of the space, we built a little arbor six feet long, 
with a box seat, and a lattice roof projecting somewhat at 
